Supported platforms

Linux and macOS are the only two fully supported platforms for the programming assignments.

Linux and macOS

The programming assignments have been developed and tested on the department Linux system and macOS.

Mips assembly

To edit and execute Mips assembly programs we will use Mars (Mips Assembler and Runtime Simulator).

Mars is available on the department Linux system.
Mars will run on any system (including Windows) as long as you have Java installed. If you prefer, you may download and install Mars on your private computer.

C programming

The C programming assignments have been developed and tested on the department Linux system and macOS.

In practice this means that you should most likely be able to do the C programming assignments on any computer running Linux or macOS.

You can access the department Linux System remotely using SSH to login to one of the student servers.

You will not be able to access the graphical desktop environment.
But, you can start graphical applications from the command line (shell) if you use X forwarding together with SSH.

SSH with X forwarding on Linux, macOS and Windows

Read more here about how to install SSH with X forwarding support on your system.

In the below example, a user with user name abcd1234 uses the ssh command with the -X option to enable X forwarding to log in to the department Linux server trygger.it.uu.se.

ssh -X abcd1234@trygger.it.uu.se

One you are logged in, you can start graphical applications from the Linux shell. You can for example run Mars.

mars

To edit C source code you can for example use the VS Code source code editor remotely.

code

Linux inside Windows

If you are using Windows and don’t like working remotely with the Deparment Linux system, nor do you want to install Linux alongside Windows on your computer (dual boot), consider one of the following options.

Install and use the Windows subsystem for Linux.
Install VirtualBox and run a virtual Linux machine. This tutorial will cover how to install VirtualBox and set up your first virtual machine, show you how to get Ubuntu and prepare for installation, and walk you through an installation of Ubuntu.